Let's go point by point through this, shall we? Spoilers insomuch as that's possible for a turd like this.

Julian Luxemburg has prepared a dinner for two at his place – but things go awry when the date does not show up and he is left waiting at his dinner table, the clock’s ticking growing unbearably loud.

So far, seems like an interesting setup: the cold open has you being stood up on your date.

„Dinner Date” is the character portrait of Julian: by becoming his subconsciousness you gain a clear vantage point on the worries which take a hold of him.

Ooh, now this intrigues me. Is it like Inside Out? Playing as someone's subconscious sounds a bit artsy but also seems to be a reasonable explanation for the disconnect Blakey has mentioned a few times, where I'm playing as the character, but also, they're doing things I wouldn't do.

As the wait for the beautiful girl grows longer it becomes evident that Julian’s real problems may not even begin originate the girl: what of his work and his boss? And what of the headhunter, his fascination with Byron and his friendship with Jerry who, all things considered, was ultimately the person who pushed Julian to go on this date?

And clearly it's not going to stay with this one failed date. This looks like one of those games where one failed date is the jumping-off point to lead to a series of decisions that lead to him turning his life around, or maybe dying (could "headhunter" be literal? Does this game have bounty hunters?!)

You are not merely listening

Wait, why would I be? I'm his subconscious, presumably this is a two-way street here.

in the unprecedented role as his subconsciousness you tap the table, look at the clock and, as Julian bares more of his mind, reluctantly start to eat, your actions resonating with Julian’s thoughts to form an absolutely singular form of intimacy.

...Presumably these are just gameplay examples?

No. They are not. This is literally the entire game.

Julian’s story lasts a fully voiced 25 minutes and is told through various unique animations, set in a real-time 3d environment with the unique interface of playing as a subconsciousness, the first of its kind.

The game is 25 minutes of listening to some random hipster douchebag whine about his date while you control exciting gameplay ideas like "Pick up the spoon. Stir soup clockwise. Stir soup anti-clockwise. Lift spoon to mouth somehow without any soup in it because you did things in the wrong order. Scoop up soup. Oops, time's up, no soup for you."

I'm not even exaggerating. This is actual, thrilling gameplay:

Those bubbles are all you get to figure out what each button will do.

But hey, the animations are unique! As in, each one was created for this game, not ripped off from some other game! So that's like, groundbreaking!

It seems to have been initially released on Nov 17 2010. Sure, that's not 1999, but 1) it's probably not a cash-in for Valentine's Day 2016 and 2) I think that's before engines like Unity and Unreal Engine were widely and (almost) freely available to anyone, which would explain the shitty graphics. Today they would probably just buy a bunch of assets at the Unity store and everything would be made of blocks a la Minecraft.

Anyway, these games rarely fail to disappoint. A few weeks ago I saw this thing on Steam. Positive reviews, "psychological horror", "excellent atmosphere", "disturbing", "creepily relatable"... and it's free to play? Well awesome!

Yeah, no. This turd is like a 14 year old's attempt at being as edgy as possible. It's not creepy, it's not horror, it's laughable. I got it for free and I'm still pissed I spent 30 minutes in the game, trying to find the "psychological horror" in it.

I've had this game sitting in my Steam library for ages because Rantis and I were going to mock the shit out of it, then we never got around to it.

And don't get me wrong, the reason these bad "walking simulator" (as snarky people on Steam tag them) games are so annoying is because SO MANY OF THEM ARE AMAZINGLY GOOD. Gone Home, Dear Esther, SOMA, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

Anyway, these games rarely fail to disappoint. A few weeks ago I saw this thing on Steam. Positive reviews, "psychological horror", "excellent atmosphere", "disturbing", "creepily relatable"... and it's free to play? Well awesome!

It's actually about 20 minutes, according to Steam. I spent a few extra minutes walking back and forth trying to interact with every possible object, because given the positive feedback that turd got, I was refusing to believe that this was all there is. I was convinced I must have missed something... like the entire game, give or take.

I was convinced I must have missed something... like the entire game, give or take.

You don't play as many shitty indies as I do, apparently. I've played $10-$15 games even Atari 2600 gamers would have dismissed as being too simplistic. Like that one dungeon game I did a few weeks ago, where the only control is hitting left or right at the right moment. Yawn.

Eh. Retsupurae was not really into that one. Especially after Slowbeef's PS3 bit the dust and they had that long wait until he got a new one and imported his save. Better than mine, though.

... although it was kind of funny when he was complaining that he paid money on a PS3 solely to play Sonic '06.

Also what's interesting is Slowbeef, who's usually a super mega-genius at games, seriously, this guy can beat Alien Soldier on Genesis in one life while chatting with streaming guests, kept forgetting moves or simply not-getting stuff in Sonic '06 that even I figured out. And I suck at games.

At the Independent Game Festival 2011, „Dinner Date” has been nominated for the Nuovo award, an award which ‘honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games.’